Overview
The Mbuti live in small groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa.
Subsistence
60% of the Mbuti's carbohydrate annual caloric intake is obtained through a villager exchange system (Wilkie and Curran 1991).
Image at right: A young Mbuti boy is fishing for lunch.
From www.nationalgeographic.com. For an external link, click: Mbuti Image
Hunting
Meat makes up roughly 49% of the Mbuti's diet.
Most but not all of the Mbuti are net hunters. Those who do not net hunt typically use archery; these foragers tend to be located in the northwestern Ituri Forest. Net hunting is thought to have been introduced to the Mbuti around 400 years ago (from
1991) by the Bantu-speaking horticulturalists. Both men and women participate in net hunting. Hunting by archery is successful 64% of the time while hunting with nets is successful 100% of the time, but the average returns for both methods are comparable. Hunting with nets takes significantly more participants and costs more to make and maintain the nets. In some areas of the Ituri Forest the maket value of bushmeat is significantly higher, therefore the Mbuti are willing to deal with the higher cost of nets (Wilkie and Curran 1991).
The leader of the net hunt is given all of the kill and it becomes his responsibility to share all meat with the group.
Image on Left: A Mbuti hunting leader carries a net over his head, used for catching prey.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0509/feature5/gallery3.html
Gathering
One of the main foods that the Mbuti gather is honey. During the honey season, honey can account for up to 80% of their caloric intake (Hewlett and Walker 1990). Although honey is a valued food product, it is only available during a few certain months a year. The Mbuti, like many hunter-gatherer groups, have local knowledge when it comes to gathering, preferring some foods over others due to taste, and whether or not it is poisonous. They collect mushrooms, roots, and other vegetation in addition to honey.
Diet
The Mbuti have many taboos on the avoidances of particular foods. The particular avoidances are highest at the times when a person needs the best nutrition: during the first few years of life, and during pregnancy.
However, although women live under harsh conditions and are "under chronic malnutrition," they have still, throughout time, adapted to the inconveniences of pregnancy. The more pregnancies a woman completes in her lifetime, though, increases her "nutritional decrements," which are cumulative over a lifetime (Aunger).
Settlements
Family huts are spherical and constructed by the wife with forest materials, which are collected by the husband. A hearth is placed in the center of the hut. Camps are established within 30 km of the Forest's edge, since the center of the Forest is owned by no one and is known as "no-man's-land." The layout of both the family hut and the Forest are a definite sphere with a defined center.
Kinship
A Mbuti band consists of extended family relations, where terms for kin members and relatives are given to all members, regardless of actual biological connection. The band is a gathering of people with metaphorical connections, and is called by ndura, which is the same name for the Forest. Because the most encompassing womb, the Forest, possess all Mbuti people, they are consequently all relatives.
Symbolism
The Mbuti possess a unique idea of the Forest, which encompasses "crucial features" of kinship, economics, politics, and religion in Mbuti culture (Mosko).
The Forest is described as:
- mother, being the origins of love, affection, and trust.
- father, where strictness, authority, and conflict derive.
- friend
- sibling
- lover
- great provider
- chief
- lawgiver
- God, and
- God of the Forest.
Barkcloth Art
A very typical yet integral part of Mbuti social culture, expressionism and spiritual belief in the forest manifests in a material known as barkcloth. Created by men and decorated by women, these pieces of "art" are expressions of Mbuti life, and the forest which is so important to them. The men take strips of bark off a tree, and pound it with various mallets and tools to make it flat and soft. The women then make dyes from various fruits from the forest, and paint designs on the barkcloth. The designs reflect the look, sounds, and feel of the forest around them. The blank space is valued for its symbolism of silence ("ekimi"), which to the Mbuti represents cohesiveness, whereas sound represents chaos ("akami"). Other designs can represent the skin of the animals within the forest.
The barkcloth is not just for looks or social gathering while making them. These pieces are worn for many different ceremonies and occasions, from boys enacting their puberty rituals to clothing newborns, and have high sentimental value to the Mbuti. You may find pictures of Mbuti Barkcloth by going to this website, where all information from this section was cited: http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/y9882E/y9882e09.htm
Family
The development of an unborn child depends immensely on, not only the father and mother, but also the Forest. The baby is the result of a "joyful intermingling" of the influences of the mother, father, and Forest.
- An important ritual for a pregnant mother to do is to introduce her child preliminarily with the "spheres" of the Forest which he will be born into.
- The mother and father will sing Forest lullabies to the unborn child.
- The mother will avoid sources of disharmony and noise in the camp while she is pregnant.
The Mbuti notion of "womb" (ndu) is directly related to the Forest (ndura). The Forest itself is a spherical womb. When you move, the sphere moves along with you, where you are always in the center. If you move too violently or suddenly, you will reach the edge of the Sphere before it can catch you, and you will become wazi-wazi, or disoriented. The center of the womb is characterized by "quiet," whereas the edge is "noisy."
The mother gives birth to her child either in the Forest or in the hut. After the child is born, the father cuts the umbilical cord with his own arrow head or knife. Not only is the infant encompassed in the womb of the hut, but also the womb of the mother and father, who surround the baby the few days after birth.
Also, shortly after the birth, the child is bathed in a scented water from a specific vine found in the Forest, and is clothed in a barkcloth. These represent the maternal and paternal dimensions of the Forest (Mosko).
The Mbuti Today
As of Colin Turnbull’s 1983 publishing of "The Mbuti Pygmies: Change and Adaptation", much was happening in the Congo of Africa, literally trapping the Mbuti in the Ituri forest in which they lived. War amongst guerillas and the government were causing many civilian casualties, and logging in the forest was creating pressure on the Mbuti in the ever-decreasing size of the Ituri.
The Mbuti Pygmies had long been considered an egalitarian hunting and gathering society, but things were beginning to change in the late 1970’s with the interruption of roads through the area in which the Mbuti lived and moved. Knowing that the Mbuti had an intimate understanding of the forest, local villagers became increasingly dependent on them to bring meat to their tables. Quickly the Mbuti were whisked into an existence of hunting to provide for the increasing demand of meat in local villages, and were in turn paid cash for their services. Although women were equally included in hunting strategies that used nets, these groups and especially bow and arrow hunting groups paved the way for inequality now that money was involved in their economy (Turnbull, 136-137).
It would seem as though this new-found “wealth” would cause the Pygmies to become more “powerful” within the realm of their world, but this is not the case. As of 2005 when Paul Salopek spent six weeks in the Ituri studying the relationship between the Pygmies and the villagers, a new group of people had migrated in due to the roads that had been paved fairly recently. Of those groups, the Nande are included and have disrupted the delicate balance of trade between the existing villagers and the Pygmies. Now, the Nande pay the Pygmies to log their own forest resource, knowing that they are skilled in the practice, ironically destroying the one thing the Pygmies held so dearly (Salopek, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0509/feature5/multimedia.html, "Disruptions to Tradition").
Image at Right: Mbuti men demonstrate their skill at cutting down a tropical hardwood to make room for a garden. It is this skill that is ironically contributing to the shrinkage of their home land. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0509/feature5/gallery5.html
A detailed account to all aspects of life that have been changed can be found in Colin Turnbull’s "The Mbuti Pygmies: Change and Adaptation".
References Cited
Aunger, Robert
1994 Are Food Avoidances Maladaptive in the Ituri Forest of Zaire? Journal of Anthropological Research 50(3):277-310.
Curran, Bryan and Wilkie, David
1991 Why Do Mbuti Hunters Use Nets? Ungulate Hunting Efficiency of Archers and Net-Hunters in the Ituri Rain Forest. American Anthropologist, New Series 93(3): 680-689.
Mosko, Mark S.
1987 The Symbols of "Forest": A Structural Analysis of Mbuti Culture and Social Organization. American Anthropologist 89(4): 896-913.
Turnbull, Colin
1983 The Mbuti Pygmies: Change and Adaptation. Orlando: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
Walker, Phillip L. with Barry S. Hewlett
1990 Dental Health diet and Social Status among Central African Foragers and Farmers. American Anthropologist New Series 92 (2): 383-398
External links
National Geographic has a Feature on the Mbuti pygmies. Who Rules the Forest? is an article by Paul Salopek with interactive video and pictures.
